She was right; there were formalities and protocols at a Ti’ach. “If I must be the Lord Sorley, what do you call Cillian? Is he Lord Cillian now?”
“Ah, you always did like to tease,” she said, smiling broadly. “He is Comiádh, is he not?”
Comiádh? I put down the tea. “Where is he?” I asked.
“In his library. But drink your tea while I make your porridge.”
“Later,” I said. “I’ll come back for it.”
The door to the library stood open. He looked up as I entered. “When were you going to tell me, Comiádh?” I asked.
“Had you not been so sure you could not stay, I would have told you last night,” Cillian said. “But it seemed inappropriate, given your anger. Your entirely legitimate anger, I would add. To mention it then would have appeared I was attempting to distract you.”
“But how? You are a prince of Ésparias, and their senior diplomat.”
“I am not a prince here. That was one of my conditions, when Ruar made the offer. I am only the Comiádh, here by the grace of the Princip and the generosity of the Teannasach. An arrangement that suited them both.”
“And suits you and Lena, too, and Dagney must be so pleased. It was what you wanted. I am happy for you, Cillian.” I said, meaning it.
He didn’t smile. “I had one other condition for Ruar,” he said. “Dagney wishes to retire soon. I told you yesterday I want you to stay, Sorley. The letter you brought confirms your appointment here, to teach music and oversee the torp. If you wish, of course.”
If I wished? Scáeli to the Ti’ach na Perras. But no, I realized. The Ti’ach na Cillian. A lifetime at his side. All I had ever dreamt of, once.
“What does Lena say?”
He did smile, then. “She will be somewhere around the house,” he said. “Go ask her. She won’t take her secca to you.”
I found her in the kitchen, feeding Gwenna milk and oatcakes. I’d forgotten how much a baby grew over a winter; Gwenna had dark eyes, and a cloud of dark hair. I received a doubtful frown, and her thumb went to her mouth.
“Don’t take it personally,” Lena said. She’d given me a level look, nothing more, when I came in. “She’s forgotten you.” She offered her daughter another piece of oatcake. Gwenna took it in her chubby hand, and then, with her father’s radiant smile, held it out to me.
I took the piece of biscuit. I turned it in my fingers, then gave it back to her. She giggled. I thought I saw a tiny softening around Lena’s eyes.
“Will you talk to me?” I asked quietly.
Her lips tightened. “In our rooms. If you must.”
“Let the Lord Sorley have his porridge, my lady,” Isa protested. She put a bowl down in front of me.
I ate the porridge gratefully. “Gwenna is beautiful,” I said, between spoonfuls.
“Of course she is,” she said. “She looks exactly like Cillian. She is also wilful and obstinate, more so every day.”
“It is just her age, my lady,” Isa said. “All mine were the same.”
“Likely,” Lena said. “But her first word was ‘no’.” She helped Gwenna finish her milk. “Are you done?” she asked me. “Then come.”
I barely recognized what had been Perras’s workroom. The table still stood near the fireplace, but most of the shelves and books had gone to the library in the annex, and without them there was room for more chairs, and a sideboard, nearly recreating their sitting room at Wall’s End. Lena put Gwenna down on the floor, handing her the silver rattle. “You had it out with Cillian, I understand?”
“Gods,” I said, flushing. “Lena, I swore at him. Everything was so sudden. I had planned to see you both at Wall’s End, to explain, and beg forgiveness, before I went away again,” I said. “Then finding you here — it was all too much. And now — Comiádh?”
“And you as scáeli, when Dagney retires. That is the plan.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Lena, can you...allow it? Will you forgive me?”
“You hurt him, Sorley, although he will deny it, and until Druise returned there was only Apulo and me to deal with the effects of that. It will take me a while to completely forgive you, but I must.”
“Because Cillian wants you to?”
“No.” Again, a softening around her eyes. “Or not only. Because angry or not, I find myself relieved you are safe.”
“Thank you,” I murmured.
“But beyond even that,” she said, “we need you if we are to make an alliance among Ésparias and Linrathe and Varsland. Which is what we are working towards, is it not?”
You are a prince of Ésparias, and their senior diplomat, I had said. His answer had been precise: I am not a prince here.
“Lena,” I said. “Should you speak of it?”
“No. Nor will I again. But that is why Ruar sent you north, isn’t it?”
“He told you that?”
“He told Cillian. What he had sent you to do, and why, and also that he was grateful Cillian had made the suggestions of a marriage alliance ten years earlier. And then he offered to make him Comiádh.” Her lips twitched, just a little. “Now I have seen Cillian speechless twice.”
“Ruar is already an impressive Teannasach,” I said. We fell silent, watching Gwenna, or at least Lena was. I studied her, seeing how thin her face was, and the lines between her eyes. My fault. I took a deep breath. “Did you know what Cillian had done, Lena?”
“No.” She didn’t look up. “But it explains his reaction to hearing Linrathe had fallen to the Marai. You remember he said it was his doing? He saw, I think, his work for Liam as shaping that outcome, and maybe he is not entirely wrong.”
“Maybe. We cannot know.” Gwenna dropped her rattle, and grasping the low table in front of her, pulled herself up to bang on its surface with one hand.
“It explains something else, too,” Lena said, her voice unemotional. “In the first days of our exile, I told Cillian about Maya, before I asked him his preferences. Women, he said, and one man, a relationship unexplored. When we met you and Turlo on the river, and I realized you were that man, I asked him why he had rejected you when you were eighteen.”
“What did he say?”
“That he would have torn your heart out. I thought then he was referring only to his self-denial and his melancholy. But he would have insisted on telling you about his broken oath, and why, and he was right, wasn’t he? It would have been more than you could have accepted.”
“It almost was now,” I said, “and I am eight years older. He protected me, Lena, in more than one way. That was his vow to me, an oath to replace the one he had broken.”
“He showed me what he’d written.” She shook her head slightly. “By the time he made a similar vow to me, he’d matured enough to understand protection isn’t possible.” She did look up then. “Shelter is, though.”
“He has you to shelter him,” I said.
“As best I can,” she said. “That is all we can ask: that in our different ways, through our different loves, we shelter each other.”
“Even me?”
“Even you,” she said. “Because with all we have been to each other, and the love there is among us all—if we can’t accept each other’s faults and mistakes and needs, then how can we ask as much from our countries? So in time, yes, I will forgive you.” She met my eyes now. “But not quickly.”
Among us all. There was another difficult conversation to be had, before I could decide if I could stay.
“Da!” Gwenna said loudly. “Da! Da!”
“Soon,” Lena said. “She wants Cillian,” she explained. “Gwenna has four words. ‘No,’ and ‘da’ for Cillian. Can you guess the others?”
“Ma, surely? And maybe something for Druisius?”
“‘Du’, yes. And ‘ma’, but,” she smiled ruefully, “she uses it indiscriminately for me and for Mhairi. But she will be a child of the Ti’ach, won’t she? Just as in Tirvan, she would have been a child of the village, although here she will know her father
.”
“Fortunate girl,” I said.
“And will you be her music teacher, Sorley?” She sounded just a little less tense, I thought.
“I will tell you soon,” I said. “I would like to be. But Druise and I haven’t talked, and we must. Except for last night, I haven’t seen him for almost a year, you realize.” I hesitated. “Does he know?”
“Yes. Cillian told him. He was unsurprised.”
I had guessed long since what Druise and Cillian had spoken of, in the days and nights it had taken to rid Cillian of his dependence on the drug. Druise had heard more than one secret, and learning that Cillian had chosen to act would not have been a surprise at all. I nodded.
“I’ll go look for him” I said. I stood, then bent to pick up Gwenna’s rattle. I handed it to her, to be rewarded again with her smile. I smiled back before I turned to leave.
“Sorley.”
I stopped at the door, looked back. “You will need time with Cillian, private time, if you stay,” Lena said. “I know that. Don’t let my anger stop you.”
“You don’t hate me, then?” I asked, with a faint smile. In her eyes I saw the flicker of memory; a conversation on a ship, two summers past.
“Cillian loves you,” she said. “How can I hate anyone he loves?”
Chapter 59
I found Druise at the weapons store, a new use for the outbuilding that had been the mews. The falcons had gone in the war; now blades and bows hung on the walls. He was examining a sword when I came in.
“The blade is loose,” he said. “We need a smith.”
“An hour’s ride north,” I said. “But I expect you know that.”
He grinned. “Of course.” He put the sword in its place, and to my utter surprise, opened his arms. “Come.” He hugged me, long and hard. “I was happy to see you safe,” he said, when he let me go.
“And I you, Druise,” I replied. “Can we talk, for a little while?”
“I am free, so yes. About what?”
“There is work for me here, a position. I cannot say yes unless you will be comfortable with me being here.” Best to be blunt, I thought.
“Comfortable? In what way?”
“We were lovers, Druise. But things have changed, haven’t they? Life will be different here.”
He chuckled. “We have been here nearly three months, yes? We have talked much, me and Lena and Cillian. I understand all the ways life will be different.”
“And?”
“I am here as bodyguard, yes? So I have been exploring, as a bodyguard must. In the annex, on the top floor, there are three rooms behind a door, bedrooms and a sitting room. A private place. If you like.”
“If I like?” It took me moment to realize what he was asking. “Are you saying — ? Still?”
He propped one leg up against the wall. “This is not a land friendly to men like us,” he said. “Cillian has warned me, and Dagney. I am still young, and you are too. We are congruus, yes? In music and in bed.” He grinned. “And it is cold here. I want a bedmate.”
“But — ” I began.
“I know you may be gone sometimes,” he interrupted. “But not often, if what Cillian says is right. That is fine. Just as I will go to Wall’s End occasionally.”
“Maybe,” I said slowly. “Druise, I have to think about this.”
He shrugged. “Did I say you had to tell me now? But if you say yes, you must keep to the agreement we made once.”
That would only be fair, and not difficult, here. A thought struck me. “What about Isa? She cannot know, Druise.”
“You think I am an idióta?” he asked, grinning. “Apulo takes care of Cillian’s rooms in the annex. He would do ours too. I have already asked him.”
We ate a leisurely mid-day meal around the long table in the hall. There were no students yet: the first would arrive in a few weeks, Cillian told me. He did not press me for an answer. Nor did we talk of politics, but of the progress of the baths, and the need for better horses for the torpari patrol. Cillian had refused any guard other than Druisius, I discovered, except that which the torp could provide. Druise was training them, both in weaponry and in scouting.
“We need beacon fires laid on the hilltops,” Druise said, “and bells at cottages and on the tracks.”
“That seems excessive,” Lena said.
“You disagree, Captain?” he said seriously.
She grinned at him. “Just consider if you would suggest them if you were only guarding Cillian, Captain.”
“Captain?” I said, looking from one to the other.
“Both of us,” Lena replied. “My remit is to teach weaponry, another of the Teannasach’s decrees, and Druise is captain of the guard here. But his promotion is a little newer, so I am senior captain, if that distinction is ever needed.”
Dagney pushed her chair back. “I have your ladhar, Sorley. I have kept it tuned and played; it is a lovely instrument. Will you come and get it?”
I followed her to her teaching rooms. My instrument hung on the wall. In the daylight, the carnelians were a dull pink; they needed firelight to glow. “Can I just leave it there a little longer?” I asked.
“You are staying, Sorley?” she asked.
“I think so. There are still things I need to consider, and things I must say to Cillian.”
“Do not tell me,” she said firmly. “Better I do not know. I will not be here, to see this plan come to fruition or failure.”
“This plan?”
“I have been at the Ti’ach a very long time, Sorley, and Perras taught or advised both Donnalch and his father. The Teannasach of Linrathe and the Princip of Ésparias agreed, or perhaps conspired, to make Cillian Comiádh here, and find roles for Lena and Druisius, and you. Whatever the excuse around Cillian’s safety or his health, or the Governor’s growing displeasure with him, there is something more behind it. But I do not want to know,” she repeated.
“But you are glad they are here.”
The smile transformed her face. “I could hardly be happier. It was all Perras wanted. Cillian is a born teacher, and Lena is proving an apt student.”
“Finding the words of the common people in the danta?” I said, remembering.
“A novel approach,” Dagney said. “One you could assist with, my dear.”
“If I stay. If I do, Dagney, there are rooms in the annex I might like.” I explained.
“They were meant for visiting dignitaries,” she said. “But you may have them, if you wish.” She sat down, indicating I should do the same. “I want to tell you something,” she said, “something I have already told Cillian and Lena. The proprieties of the Ti’ach require no expression of affection between them in public, and for you and Druisius there could be no hint of anything beyond friendship, of course. It is a strain to remember this, and always be on your guard. But you can do it. Perras and I did for most of our time here together.”
It took me a moment. “You were lovers?”
“We were. From a few months after we both arrived.”
“I had no idea.”
“No one did, except Isa.”
“Why didn’t you marry?”
“Because it is forbidden for female scáeli’en to marry. Did you not know that? As a wife my freedom would be curtailed, and that is not appropriate for a scáeli, is it? But we were together, and then we had Cillian to care for, and that was enough.”
“More than enough sometimes, I would guess,” I said, grinning.
“Sometimes,” she agreed. “But now you are both here, Perras’s hoped-for heir, and mine. Our world has changed, irrevocably, but here in this tiny corner, things are close to being what I wished they could be, and I may have a few years to enjoy them.”
“Not just a few, I hope,” I said, before her words sunk in. “I was your chosen successor?”
“You were, and are. Just as you will be head of the council someday, I predict. A man of influence.”
Chapter 60
I walked out
the kitchen door and along the stream that ran behind the Ti’ach, crossing it at the bridge. The long meadow lay ahead of me, rising at its far end to one of the hills where Druise wanted a beacon fire. Yesterday’s rain had been followed by a day of sunshine and gentle breeze. Skylarks sang in the clear sky, and the first lambs leapt and butted with the joy of life.
I turned to look back at the hall. I could see Apulo and Druise and another man working on the new bath house, and Mhairi hanging washing — diapers, I guessed — from a line in the kitchen dooryard. Home? I had no other now. I was wanted here. I wanted to stay.
“Wipe your feet,” Mhairi said to me, as I approached the door. The kitchen smelled of stew, tonight’s meal. I crossed the empty hall to the annex, and Cillian’s study.
He was at his desk. “Am I disturbing you?” I asked.
“Never.” He stretched. “I am preparing lessons: the first students will be here at mid-summer, and Ruar perhaps earlier, or so he said in his letter.”
“You did that for fifteen years,” I said, entering the room. “How much preparation do you need to do?” I closed the door.
“I have not taught for three.”
“And you have forgotten? Why do I doubt that?” He looked up at me, his smile lighting his eyes. “You seem very happy,” I added.
“I am,” he answered. “How could I not be? To be Comiádh after Perras was all I ever let myself dream of, although I told no one. That Perras too wanted it, I never knew.”
“I wish I’d been there, to see your face when Ruar told you,” I said.
“I was speechless,” he said. “Ask Lena. I would have been content to be an additional teacher here, and continue my studies.”
I snorted. “Lena might believe that. I don’t.”
He laughed. “Sorley, mo duíne gràhadh, you know me too well.”
My beloved man. I wanted to hold him, to feel his hands on my back and his lips on my hair. I took a deep breath. “Cillian. I did not just run away from you, from what I saw as a betrayal.”
“It was a betrayal,” he said. “But go on.”
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